Faculty

Dr. Brian P. Bennett

Bio

Dr. Brian Bennett is Professor of Religious Studies and currently chair of the department.

A native of California, Bennett earned his B.A. summa cum laude from Princeton and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has taught at NU since 2001. Bennett's research attempts to combine elements drawn from both comparative religion and sociolinguistics. His book Religion and Language in Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge) offered a conspectual view of the revitalization of Church Slavonic after Communism. Bennett has also studied the connections between Esperanto and various religious/utopian movements. His current project (under contract with Wiley Blackwell) is a general introduction to the phenomenon of sacred languages, traversing Latin, Pali, Arabic, and other examples.